We have lots of content about how to start a wholesale electronics business. Considering that, we wanted to make sure there was also content available for those looking to scale their wholesale companies.
Scaling is a business term that basically means business growth is happening. By scaling, you’re creating a foundation that your company has to grow. Scaling a business isn’t always easy, but it should never feel impossible.
If you’re not ready to scale your business right now, that’s fine. However, it might still be a good idea to read this to prepare for when that time arises.
Here is a complete guide to scaling your wholesale electronics business.
1. Have a Gameplan
It’s hard to start anything in life or business without a gameplan. While we would love to give your business the perfect gameplan, your exact plan will depend on your company.
For instance, the exact gameplan for an electronics refurbisher will vary from an electronics supplier.
However, there are a few general things to keep in mind as you begin creating your gameplan.
First, you’ll need to decide if your company is ready to start scaling. If it’s not, there’s nothing wrong with waiting a little longer to start scaling your company.
When you are ready, take note of what your company’s expansion goals are? Is this business looking for more customers? Or maybe you want to expand into a new part of the country or world?
Having a plan of what you want to do helps you organize how much expansion will cost and how much help you’ll need to accomplish your tasks.
2. Try to Keep Your Company’s Branding Consistent
Source: Rolling Out
When it comes to scaling your business, you’ll want to focus on the importance of branding. In the business world, branding is how you position your company.
Unfortunately, it’s easy for certain business owners to mess this one up and not have consistent branding.
So, how do you do this? Fortunately, it’s not as hard as it seems.
One of the best ways to have consistent branding is to keep your message the same. If your brand is serious, that’s OK. But you don’t want to have a serious tone on one platform and a more playful voice on another platform.
Consistent branding is also important when it comes to using logos. You want your company’s logos to be consistent. If possible, use one main logo across all of your platforms.
By having consistent images, it’s easier for your business to stand out in the public's eyes.
Trade-In Tech is a great way to help your business expand its brand. After you join Trade-In Tech, your business has the ability to reach thousands and thousands of other companies.
3. Make Sure to Stay Involved in Your Business
There’s definitely nothing wrong with taking time away from your business, especially as an entrepreneur who’s in desperate need of a vacation! Just make sure you personally stay tuned in to what’s going on with your business.
Unfortunately, there are many horror stories of business owners completely walking away from their growing companies. When they come back, things are in a state of disrepair.
You can start doing this by listening in on meetings, looking over data, or asking managers how things are going. You’ll have lots of options to stay informed of what’s going on in your company.
4. Don’t Be Afraid to Reach Out to Others
Source: Inc.
While running a business, you’re going to run into challenges. Some of these challenges might involve knowing whether or not it’s the right time to expand your company.
For instance, you might run into problems when you’re buying wholesale electronics. Or you might be having issues with setting up your company’s website.
To find help with these types of issues, consider reaching out to other people. Chances are, you probably have more people to reach out to than you might think. The people you reach out to can be anyone you think of as knowledgeable, including your family, friends, co-workers, and others.
Some people struggle with reaching out to others because they don’t know where to start.
If you’re looking to network with some of the greatest minds in the wholesale electronics industry, check out Trade-In Tech. Our social platform makes it easy for wholesalers, dealers, vendors, retailers, and others to connect with each other.
5. Track Every Metric You Can
Another essential tip is to make sure you’re tracking metrics. As a rule of thumb, it’s worth tracking if you can measure it. Most of the time, your metrics will have to do with digital traffic.
Popular metrics for a company to check out include engagement, clicks, conversions, and sales.
So, how do you get started tracking metrics? There are a few ways. One of the first things we recommend doing is setting up your website with both Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
There are other services that offer similar types of analytics. However, other analytic services are going to have data either behind Google’s live information. Sometimes, these services can be weeks or months behind what Google gives you for free.
Setting Up Google Search Console
Getting started with Google Search Console is quite easy. First, you’ll need to have a Google account. Fortunately, Google accounts are free and fast to set up.
After creating your Google account, go to Google Search Console. Then, you’ll see an option to “Add a Property.” This is where you’ll enter your website’s domain. Now, you’ll need to verify your property.
There are several ways you can verify your ownership of your company’s website. One way is by inserting a small code snippet into your website’s HTML. We would list the code here, but Google gives distinctive codes for each domain.
Another way to verify your website in Google Search Console is by adding a DNS record or connecting with your Google Analytics account.
When Google is able to verify that you own a website property, you will get a confirmation message. After 24-48 hours, you should start seeing Google update your property with potential errors, rankings, and lots of other useful information.
Connecting Your Website With Google Analytics
Speaking of Google Analytics, this system is definitely another powerful tool you’ll want while scaling your business. Google Analytics is a set of tools that help you learn where your visitors are coming from.
It’s great to have lots of website rankings in Google. However, there are many other great sources of traffic besides this search engine giant.
As it is with Google Search Console, you’ll again need to confirm that you own the website you’re trying to verify. You’ll have a few ways to verify your website, which are similar to how you’ll do this in the previous Google Search Console section.
After verifying your website, you can use Google Analytics to find out where your visitors are coming from. With this information, it’s much easier to prioritize posting content to where your business has the most readers.
With Google Analytics, you can also opt to find out more about your visitors. This information includes their locations, behaviors, interests, age, and more. Just make sure that your website’s privacy and cookies policies reflect the information you’re using for research.
6. Consider Investing in Technology
Source: Trade-In Tech
Some people think that a growing business is easier to take care of than a smaller one. However, business owners know that is rarely the case.
Instead, companies that are growing usually need a lot of people there to ensure this growth keeps happening.
Fortunately, you can make extra tasks easier to manage with the help of technology. In this day and age, there are many companies that make automation software to help your business.
For example, Trade-In Tech is a great way to grow your business.
You can benefit from all of the technology Trade-In Tech uses to help our member’s companies grow. We have chat rooms, a social platform, a messaging system, as well as public and private groups.
By having so many ways to connect with and speak to electronics wholesalers, you’ll rapidly start seeing your connections grow. When you have more connections, it’s easy to see your business scale.
7. Optimize Your Company’s Website
In 2020, another excellent way to grow your business is with effective search engine optimization. To put it simply, search engine optimization is the process of preparing your electronics website for search engines.
As you know, search engines have a lot of potential content to sort through and rank in order of relevance for its users. To make a long story short, SEO (search engine optimization) is how people can make websites appear to be the best suggestion for search engines.
Basically, optimized websites usually get more traffic than non-optimized ones. And you’ll need more traffic to effectively scale your business.
When it comes to optimizing your company’s website, you have two main options. You can choose to handle website optimization in-house or outsource this work to another company.
You’ll save money by learning how to optimize your website and carry out these changes. With that said, making optimization mistakes can have major ramifications for your website. Many business owners feel that it's better to contact another company for SEO-related help.
8. Start Using Social Media to Your Advantage
Source: Pixabay
Social media is another great way to scale your business. Most social media platforms are free to use. Also, social media shows no sign of slowing down in terms of popularity. Research shows that there are now over 3.5 billion social media users throughout the world.
Think of social media as a great way to reach a large audience. Yes, it takes a little time to set up and start posting to social media accounts. However, you’ll want to hang in there because social media’s undeniable results are worth waiting for.
By now, you probably know about all of the most popular social media platforms. If not, that’s OK, we’ll mention platforms that you definitely want your business on.
Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn are just a few of many popular social media websites and apps. Considering that, these platforms (and their audiences) can differ wildly.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are all great networks for keeping your company’s audience posted (no pun intended) on what your business is up to.
LinkedIn is another great social media platform. This platform is geared more to a professional audience, so keep that in mind when creating or sharing content.
TikTok and Instagram are popular with younger audiences. However, these services are quickly becoming popular with people of all ages. Generally speaking, it’s best to appeal to younger adults through these social platforms.
What’s great about social media is that most platforms provide you with lots of metrics. These metrics can help you learn what content and behaviors are driving growth throughout social media.
9. Create a Culture
In the world of business, it’s imperative for every company to have a culture. You might not think that culture has a lot to do with scaling a business. However, this isn’t true. Culture plays an incredibly important role in helping a business get to that next level.
Plus, most experts agree that it’s much easier to build a culture early on than it is to change it post-expansion.
Having a clear culture is also great when it comes time to hire new talent, which is often an essential part of the scaling process. With a culture that’s easy to understand, it immediately lets potential hires know if they’re a good fit for your business.